It was part remembrance, part campaign. “Three years ago today, I joined many of you for a ceremony of remembrance at the U.S. Capitol. And I said that we had to do ‘everything we can to prevent and end atrocities,’” Obama said. ”And so I want to report back to some of you today to let you know that as president I’ve done my utmost to back up those words with deeds. Last year, in the first-ever presidential directive on this challenge, I made it clear that ‘preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America.’”

He said that didn’t necessarily mean military intervention, but using that “moral suasion” to steer tyrants while his administration is “going to institutionalize” the focus on genocide.

“We recognize that, even as we do all we can, we cannot control every event,” Obama said. “…Elie alluded to what we feel as we see the Syrian people subjected to unspeakable violence, simply for demanding their universal rights.”

With that, he announced another initiative, again accompanied by White House documentation. In an executive order signed today, Obama enacted the “Grave Human Rights Abuses Via Information Technology” in Syria and Iran, or GHRAVITY sanctions, “that abet them for using technologies to monitor and track and target citizens for violence,” the president said, by targeting those who have directed or facilitated the operation of tracking or network disruption technology that could assist in or enable human rights abuses.

“It’s one more step that we can take toward the day that we know will come — the end of the Assad regime that has brutalized the Syrian people — and allow the Syrian people to chart their own destiny,” Obama told Wiesel and the rest of the crowd at the Holocaust museum.

The sanctions come as the White House has acknowledged that the Kofi Annan “peace plan” for a Syrian ceasefire isn’t exactly working.

“We remain horrified by the reports of significant violations of the ceasefire by the Assad regime,” press secretary Jay Carney said at Friday’s briefing. “Yet again, this regime has failed to keep its word, has failed to, thus far, live up to the obligations it made to honor the Annan plan.”

Today wasn’t the first time that Wiesel, 83, has called out a president during a joint appearance at the Holocaust memorial. In 1993, he told President Clinton that “we must do something to stop the bloodshed” in Bosnia.

Today, Wiesel reminded Obama about the dangers of evil unchallenged.

“It could have been prevented,” Wiesel said. “The greatest tragedy in history could have been prevented had the civilized world spoken up, taken measures in 1939, ‘40, ‘41, ‘42. Each time, in Berlin, Goebbels and the others always wanted to see what would be the reaction in Washington and London and Rome, and there was no reaction so they felt they could continue.”

Obama — who also announced a posthumous Medal of Freedom for Jan Karski, a Polish Underground officer who carried his firsthand accounts of the Holocaust to the world including FDR — punctuated his message of how great his administration is at confronting atrocity with a footnote that it’s not just government’s responsibility.

Whereas he continuously stresses the power of government to necessarily step into matters ranging from education to healthcare, he deflected the central responsibility for “never again” as a “challenge to societies.”

“You don’t just count on officials, you don’t just count on governments,” Obama said. “You count on people — and mobilizing their consciences.”

Bridget Johnson is a veteran journalist whose news articles and opinion columns have run in dozens of news outlets across the globe. Bridget first came to Washington to be online editor at The Hill, where she wrote The World from The Hill column on foreign policy. Previously she was an opinion writer and editorial board member at the Rocky Mountain News and nation/world news columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News.
She is an NPR contributor and has contributed to USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, Politico and more, and has myriad television and radio credits as a commentator. Bridget is Washington Editor for PJ Media.

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1.
deguello

“Have we not learned”? Asks Elie the Wiesel, long-time democrat robot, and fanatical supporter of gun control (disarming the public to make another holocaust poossible). You could cut the irony with a knife, it’s so thick! No Elie hasn’t learned and neither have most American Jews who will vote for an Ahmadinejad appeaser for president next November.Pathetic!

No, American Jews have not learned a single thing! I don’t understand their willful blindness. They will vote for Obama again and therefore jeopardize the existence of Israel. Have they not realized that Obama is not a “friend” of Israel? Amazing!

“In 1993, he [Wiesel] told President Clinton that “we must do something to stop the bloodshed” in Bosnia.” The end result of course was US involvement in two mini-wars on behalf of Muslims, an opportunity for jihadis to get field experience courtesy of their Saudi and Iranian sponsors, and ongoing discrimination against ethnic Serbs in the two new Muslim states.

probably just another coincidence, but the bombing of Belgrad started the evening before the Juanita Broderick rape interview was to air. the interview was postponed for many moons to make way for our need to see the destruction of an European city.

Couple of quick comments-
1- Your comments represent the classic groundwork for anti-semitism. If Jews vote for Obama because they feel he is good for the country they betray israel. If they vote based upon concern for Israel they are unpatriotic Americans. Based on your formula Jews are blamed no matter how they vote.
2- Almost 25% of those who call themselves Jews are not. They have been ” converted ” by ” reform rabbis ‘ who are as Jewish as a ham sandwich. They are worshippers of liberalism and anything goes. You don’t just sprinkle some water n someone and make them a Jew.
3- Jews represent a miniscule portion of the electorate. Blacks will vote more than 90% for Obama. Yet I see no complaining on PJM on the Black vote. I have yet to see a single article on the subject on PJM.
4- Jews who practice Judaism will overwhelmingly support the Republican candidate. Any Republican candidate.

Atrocities Prevention Board….seriously? If that’s not a case for doing nothing while innocents are slaughtered I don’t know what is. Case in hand did something in Libya but not Syria where the murder is much worse. Obama is great at annointing winners and losers. Sadly, there is a lot of pc bs that comes out of Obama’s teleprompters. Nonsense, utter insincere nonsense. It baffles me that people born jewish can’t see they are being used and played all the way while people in Israel are subject to air raid sirens multiple times a day from rockets being shot into their streets, homes, businesses, schools and hospitals. I don’t understand how anyone can be aloof about that. I think there is a very bad case of anti-semitism in the Whitehouse and in our nation.
It is very sad indeed.

APB? Another acronym? Another layer of bureaucracy?
What about the State Department? What about the UN? Isn’t the UN set up for just this situation? Can’t the State Department be responsible for this, or is Hillary too busy?
And exactly HOW would a bureaucracy within the Executive Branch PREVENT atrocities?

Mostly because in the past this seemed to work out alright with honest administrations but with this one and most other Democrat administrations people have caught on to the fact that it is just for cover and they may or may not take the suggestions just like the last BLUE RIBBON Panel over the deficit, it is now just a joke to spend more taxpayers money so they can then go ahead and steal more from the taxpayers to prove that they are doing something anything even if it is wrong and it is!

Leave it to Obama to hijack his moment of Holocaust Remembrance Day and speak on behalf of the Syrian people, a people dedicated to the Islamic cult and the death of every Jew in the world. Good going there brother! I can’t see why he didn’t include saying good things about Louis Farakan, the Reverend Wright and Al Sharpton. It was another Jimmy Carter moment.

By the way the South Sudan war predated any Obama involvement and if you check the dates of the other things mentioned he had little to do with it. He did however aid the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt and in Libya. He has done nothing to prevent the persecution of Christians in Egypt, Pakistan or Nigeria.

On the other hand during his watch, race bating has increased in this country. Illegal immigration has continued unabated. Monies needed to rebuild this country have been diverted. Subsidizing George Soros’s oil adventure in Brazil is a great example. In the mean time, he blocked drilling in the US for years, the building of the Keystone pipeline. Solyrand happened on his watch.

So far his record is inept, incompetent at best; dangerous, prejudicial at worst. Government fiat to run the country without Congressional approval has increased geometrically to the point where it looks like a country taken over by a third world dictator. I genuinely want to say something good about the man. Hey, maybe he’ll invite me to the White House for dinner so I can have some $100 per lb. steak.

Down here in Tennessee we call those people “Yeller Dog Democrats” and they would vote for a Yellow dog before they would vote for a republican because of the civil war and Lincoln, seems they hold a grudge for quite some time and for that they are stupid as well as ignorant!

Are these mendacious chowderheads so tired and lazy and mentally inbred that they couldn’t come up with something snappier than “Atrocities Prevention BOARD?”

Seriously, a “Board?” Boards look into stuff like water and sewer or waste management issues and other prosaic flapdoodle. So is this Atrocities Board going to levy fines on the next Hitler or something? Issue injunctions and board up the offending country? There’s no more transparent way to broadcast one’s total lack of seriousness than giving this new organization such a ridiculous name. It is a deliberate act of contempt. Deliberate. Is that aged, braided hippie Samantha Powers going to be in charge of this fraud? Why does anyone take that strange woman seriously? Shouldn’t she be assigned to ride the subways talking out loud to herself and cursing at the other passengers? That would be more appropriate for her.

Are these mendacious chowderheads so tired and lazy and mentally inbred that they couldn’t come up with something snappier than “Atrocities Prevention BOARD?”

–

This is strictly speculation but I suspect that the original name was something like Atrocities Prevention Commission but when they shortened it to the acronym APC, they realized it was the name of a company that makes battery backups for computers and worried that this might be a problem. So they thought about alternatives. Then someone noticed that “APB” was a term they’d heard on cop shows (“let’s put out an APB (All Points Bulletin) on that guy!”) and thought it sounded really cool if their new group had the initials APB. So they simply looked for a word starting with ‘B’ that sounded like some kind of agency and came up with “Board”….

These people are idiots. Also, did anyone else hear about the fact that the Dept. of Homeland Security placed an order for 450 million rounds of hollow-point .40cal ammo?that’s enough for seven years! Are they planning a seven year war with the American people? Hmmm. Now that I think about it, the Bible says that when the Anti-Christ is removed from power, that there will be a seven year period of basically hell on earth. Wait a minute. The Mayan calendar and the whole December 21st thing could be when the rapture takes place! Romney wins, the Anti-Christ is out, but all hell breaks loose around the Inauguration! I guess we’d all better get ready.

Unfortunately, the person he appointed today to oversee this Atrocities Prevention Board is Samantha Power, who is as anti-Israel as it gets.

You know, the woman who once demanded that the USA invade Israel militarily and force a “Palestinian Peace” on them? That Samantha Power will be overseeing and monitoring atrocities. She will turn a blind eye to any “atrocities” against Jews or Christians, I’m sure – and paint any defensive action by Israel at all as brutal genocide. Watch.

How you ask – how did this cretin get into the White House?
As a colored man he picked up about 80 percent of the ‘really off white vote’ – from the always confused Jewish side of the ballot box he racked up about 60 percent of the krepla soup crowd!
Hispanic legal voters amounted to about 50 percent.
Chicago style voters; dead people – criminals – double dippers – illegal’s – coupled with communists and socialist types – they put him over the top.
Stupidity played a large part in the makeup of your average Obama voter – and Oby hasn’t showed much in the way of ‘smarts’ since he got into office.
The guy is tribal – and what bothers me now is – ‘I haven’t seen the dog lately!’
Wake up people – this piece of work ‘has to go’- and I think soon – before he can bury us under ‘Marshal Law’.

There is no way the US is going to prevent mass killings overseas. Our leaders and the bleeding hearts need to get over this idea that the US needs to save the world. The worst military disasters we’ve had have been just such missions, particularly Bosnia and Somalia. We stopped the fighting (sort of) in the Balkans and created a haven for organized crime and terrorists while Somalia, well, that’s still Somalia. Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t work out too well either.

I’ve heard that troops have already been sent to Uganda and Nigeria might not be far behind, except that the Boko Haram are Muslim so maybe not. Sudan is about to go to war with Southern Sudan, but there is the Muslim (and Arab) issue again.

Bring the troops home and deploy them to the border. We spent billions on useless bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Certainly we could build a few new ones, company and battalion sized, to secure the hotter sections of the border and rotate regular and national guard troops through or even create a couple of new “Borderers” brigades. Bet those would overflow with volunteers.

Meanwhile, race-based advocacy groups whose disdain for white people is palpable flourish in our nation’s capital, like the NAACP and Congressional Black Caucus. But it’s fine everybody cuz they’re in the minority and don’t have an army.

Since Obama’s their de facto leader, that would put him in the category of an unflinching fool. He spent 20 years in a black KKK church that considers, Louis Farrakhan, the most famous Hitler-without-an-army we’ve had in America in my lifetime, a hero.

That church’s theological hero, James Cone, regularly exaggerates America’s history of slavery and lynchings until the Civil War becomes an irrelevant and minor police action of no consequence and children in Oregon in 1912 had little statues of Nathan Bedford Forest in cereal giveaway contests.

Who in the world is Barack Obama and his adopted uncle, Rev. Jeremiah (Goebbels) Wright?

Apparently Obama selected a woman who advocated attacking Israel and forcing a “peace settlement on them. Good choice for an Atrocities board. Yet another inspired appointment, but the wonder is what or who inspired him?

I’m sure that the “Atrocities Prevention Board” will, after a year or so, issue the “Atrocities Prevention Board Report” that lists areas that require further study. An “Atrocities Prevention Board Action Plan” will be called for and a $19 million dollar grant will be given to a group to formulate that plan.

Once the “Atrocities Prevention Board Action Plan” is formulated it will be released to the news media and the President will make a major address announcing the creation of “Atrocities Prevention Week”.

Colleges and Universities will being courses in Atrocity Prevention and George Soros will announce that his group will award $17 million dollars to Columbia University for the creation of an “Atrocity Prevention” chair. Harvard will announce that the creation of Graduate courses in “Advanced Atrocity Prevention.”

A new Atrocities Prevention Board? Oh I’m sure tyrants and dictators and mullahs all over the world are shaking in their boots over the sound of that. I wonder how you get a job on that board? Does it have a good insurance and pension plan? And, you just know that once a government “board” or agency is created, it never goes away. It’s a job for life. And tell me, what can the new Atrocities and Prevention Board tell you that you can’t find out by watching cable news or by reading the news on the Internet? I guess if a lot of people are getting killed, like in Syria, it’s an atrocity, right? I SEE that happening almost every night on cable news. Do I need a board to tell me what I’m seeing on the news is, well, news? Whenever Washington doesn’t want to do anything about something, they create a board and study the problem. By the time they come to a solution, all the people they are trying to save are dead. Now THAT is an Atrocity.

Just how does the president define “mobilizing our consciences”? This administration seems to have consciences that deny “evil” and speak flowery phrases about the “good” it has been doing. Yet we are in immanent danger of attack and collapse from within. Who should be held accountable? Not the people only- the leaders bear the responsibility equally. When will they assume theirs?
The upcoming election has distracted attention from the crises we are approaching.

And how many Democrats will he hire for the APB…(APB to dictators? All Points Bulletin?) (And we elected him?) Should take a minimum of 25,000 Democrats to staff it all with immediate healthcare, retirement plans, perks, and many, many days off. Union membership mandatory, of course.

Ah ain’t used to writin much but ah tries and dats da main thing right? Ah gots lotsa help with dis so don’t complane bout my speling, ok? I jest wanna share mah o-pinions an complaints about our most awesomest president.

Most people call him Barack Obama or mebbe include his middle name, Hussein, but dat just be too Muslim, if yo catch mah drift. Anyways, to me he’s just plain ol’ “Barry,” the name he used fo years befo he got uppity and went to Columbia and Hahvard with a little help from his friends and learnt about his roots like Kunta Kinte.

I can call him Barry since him, Mishelle, and his honky veep an his dago campaign manager adress me by the name mah momma gave me when they email me once or twicet a week.

Ah signed up to be on Barry’s emailing list years ago and, since den ah be most proud to say I been invited to the White House a buncha times. Well, dey wasn’t invitations, dey was “opportunitys” to be invited if ah sent him money but ah consider them pretty real, specially dose extra-special invites to Barry’s and Mishelles birthday blasts.

Ah didn’t go because ah couldnt buy presents after we spend all our food stamps on some goodies, Ha, Ha, ya know wut ah mean. Ahm a responsibble person. Ah needed what was left to feed all my kids.

Yep, ahm what dey call a forty-seven percenter cuz 47% of Amerika is on food stamps and Barry is da food stamp prez and whats wrong with dat? They ain’t stamps no more, anyway. Now dey give us a credit card thing that makes us look like we’re acshully payin for our food!

Now, I can unnerstand the prez’s Wall Street friends like Goodman Sax are pissed at him for calling dem ”fat cats” but, c’mon, dey are fat, but why is it all about the green alla time, man? The Obama emails always go back to money like when ah was sorta invited to a party jest yesterday by some beatch, Ann Marie Habershaw.

She was nice tho and she gave me some good advise. She told me to ”Choose your guest wisely” when ah send her three my bucks–which i didn’t–to enter a raffle “to go to a party for the President at George Clooney’s house.” He’s dat actor that everyone thinks is gay but ah think he’s a lyin’ hypocrit for tryin to say he’s a ninety-nine percenter and we all know he’s a stinkin zillionire!

They all seem to have this thing about dat three number. My buddy hisself sent me an email last week. He sez, “The other side thinks they can win by trashing me” and axed me to give him three to help stop that damn trashing.

my grand father and 2 grand uncles were murdered by the gestapo in Vienna, Austria.
the family was told that there would be a trial on Monday; come down on Tuesday to say goodbye; they will be shot on Wednesday. When family members showed up on Tuesday the gestapo pigs said they shot our fathers on Monday.
To cement the curse, they told the church that they were all suicides, which means no burial on sanctified ground for catholics.